North Shore Ravine Restoration and Conservation

Plants of Concern and other CBG staff have been major contributors to a suite of conservation projects focused on Illinois’ north shore ravines. POC staff have led efforts to develop a rapid assessment protocol for land managers to use in evaluating ravine plant communities, and the program is working to find additional funding to finalize the tool and use it in comprehensive ravine assessment. In addition, long-term monitoring of rare species by Plants of Concern staff and volunteers is feeding efforts to control invasive plants along the ravines and north shore of Lake Michigan. Starting in 2015, an invasive plant strike team began using invasive plant location data collected by POC as a baseline for control efforts, and POC monitoring in 2016 and 2017 will be used to evaluate that effort. Further, in 2016 CBG hosted a ravine symposium to bring together ravine land managers, owners, researchers, and policy experts who shared findings and best practices for conserving and restoring these sensitive systems. Goad presented about ravine natural history and native flora at this conference, as well as about results of monitoring from Openlands Lakeshore Preserve. Conference attendees then discussed how to leverage what they had learned to advance ravine conservation in their own communities. (Goad, Miller, Mueller).